Sexual Assault Survivor Explains Why We Must Stop Teaching Girls To Be “Nice”

It’s a situation many women, unfortunately, know all too well: being on the receiving end of cat-calls, unwanted touches and even assault.

Now, model Jessica Leahy is opening up about the time she was groped on a subway train in Australia, and why she did nothing about it.

In a moving post for With Her In Mind, the Australian model recalled a time when “a stranger forced his hand up my shirt and grabbed at my ‘p—-‘ ” on a train. She noted that she rushed out of the subway car as soon as the doors opened.

“Perhaps more shocking was the fact that I did nothing,” she wrote. “I made no attempt to attract attention, I had no desire to make a fuss … Why? Because of our cultural obsession with raising girls to be ‘good.’ ”

“From birth, we are told not to be rude, or bossy, or difficult and above all, not to be a bitch,” she wrote. “And it’s obsession with ‘being nice’ that is getting good girls into bad trouble.”

She also recalled a recent incident in which a man made a sexual gesture toward her as he drove down a busy freeway.

“It’s been a few days since this disturbing incident, but I can’t let the rage go,” she continued. “He is guilty of sexually harassing a complete stranger and that’s not okay.”

She ended her post with a call to action: “We need to change the way we raise boys.”